


First, Best,

by Trekkele



Series: Tumblr Drabbles [6]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, freeform poetry, how to make a captain in several existential steps, i love this, i think, it sort of had a rhythm when i wrote it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-09 17:48:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15272913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trekkele/pseuds/Trekkele
Summary: Here's how you make a Captain.





	First, Best,

**Here’s how you make a Captain.**

You set him up for failure.

You dare him to do better, watch him push and pull and tear himself to pieces, because _four years, I’ll do it in three_. Because, _800 lives in twelve minutes, who do you think you are_?

You tell him can’t do it, he’ll never do it, no one has done it before.

Sit back and watch him do it anyways.

 

 **Here’s how you build a Captain**.

Give him the hard missions. Give him the impossible ones. Tell him he’ll lose people. Tell him “personnel survival is not a priority.”

Watch as he says _it is for me_.

Watch as he risks everything again and again _and again_ , because _it is for me_.

Watch as he apologizes and fixes and grows a crew around a broken frame of scattered stars.

Watch as he works around problems as if they don’t exist. Watch as he inspires the kind of loyalty no one thought possible. The kind that does the impossible. The kind that cheats death.

Again and again _and again_.

Watch.

 

**_Here’s how the universe fixes itself._ **

 

_There’s a blue eyed boy who’s so like his father that the stars think they belong to him._

_There’s a wheat haired child who runs through burning fields and jumps off cliffs and swims an ocean because he can, he can, he will,_ stop me.

_There’s a dark haired soft eyed child with blood on his knuckles and a fire in his heart._

_There’s a brown-eyed-green-eyed soft hearted boy who thinks healing will always be in his way. That he can fix anything. That anything can be fixed._

_There’s bright eye boys with a smile on his lips and blood on his teeth and a mother who loves him and a father who tries/tried/trying but the universe needs bright eyed boys and the universe cannot afford to be kind_

_Not now._

 

**Here’s how you break a Captain.**

 

Tell him you’re leaving, tell him you’re dying, tell him you’re not good enough _you never were._

 

Tell him he’s not worth your time but he has it anyways because someday he might be.

 

Burn him out from the inside and promise his ship will be safe if he goes but you both know that’s not a promise you can keep but he does it anyway, he does it anyway.

He dies anyway.

 

**Here’s how you break a bright eyed Captain.**

 

_Make him a Captain._

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a reference to that first best destiny thing because poor Kirk has a idealized vision of TOS!Kirk from TOS!Spock that he’s gonna spend too much time agonizing over. And the more I think about that line the more I hate it because that's not how these things, that's not how destiny works, and it pisses me off because as much as I love TOS!Kirk, Nu!Kirk has had to try so much harder for the same things, and essentially that's what this is, they decided they need him to be Captain, and a Certain Kind of Captain and Spock and the world seem intent on shoe-horning him into that place when he will never be that person, his life is too different and too many things have changed and what he'd being told with that First, Best, Destiny is that no matter how hard he tries he will never live up to the ideal of the "prime" timeline, even though in many ways they all know that isn't true.
> 
> Aaaand apparently I have a lot of Feelings about this. Who knew. Also I love Pike but theres quiet a bit of shade for how he manipulates Kirk so easily. Thanks for reading! 
> 
> Also I'm trying to decide if I should keep posting as separate works in a series or as new chapters in a one fic. Thought?


End file.
